By then Nick Clegg had already proposed making a separate Commons statement
from the dispatch box welcoming Leveson’s report, to follow David Cameron’s
rejection of its key recommendation. The Lib Dems call this “differentiation
plus”; to the Tory right it is rank treachery.

William Hague intervened with an impassioned plea for freedom of the press.

The foreign secretary told his colleagues that the Russians were itching for
Britain to bring in a press law. Vladimir Putin wants to justify his human
rights abuses, like the recent show trial of the members of the female punk
band Pussy Riot, by pointing to state controls in Britain.

The Russian government, like all authoritarian regimes, embraces Lenin’s view
that “freedom is so precious that it should be